Tough Road Ahead for Spielberg's 'Lincoln'

Wednesday

18Feb2009

Tough Road Ahead for Spielberg's 'Lincoln'

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 11:21PM

We may need to hold our collective horses on Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. A fascinating article about the behind the scenes of being Steven Spielberg (including how much he makes as a Universal theme parks consultant) popped up in Slate's Big Money. Among the many items discussed is how difficult Lincoln might prove to be for the normally oh-so-teflon Spielberg.

According to Kim Masters, Paramount may have already passed on the project, even at a reported cost of only $50 million. That means Disney could swoop in and produce it. With Disney's new agreement with Spielberg's DreamWorks, this would make sense.

However, because that deal apparently contains the condition that during the life of the deal no DreamWorks movie be turned into a theme park attraction anywhere at anytime, that could cause an even bigger issue for Disney. Apparently, the studio was set to have Liam Neeson record the voice of Lincoln and use props and costumes from the film used in one of its historical attractions.

Universal, obviously, wouldn't let that happen, not for what they're paying Spielberg, even after the DreamWorks/Universal deal went sour. Confused?

The bottom line is that Lincoln may not be the sure thing we thought it was, that maybe movie fans are looking forward to it more than movie studios, even with Lincoln's bicentennial upon us this year. And even stranger is the theme park angle, which I'm sure Disney could get over. But would you have expected a Spielberg project - particularly this Spielberg project to be so up against it?

Colin Boyd |

Permalink | in

Bio-pic,

Liam Neeson,

Lincoln,

Steven Spielberg |

Print Article |

Email Article |

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

Post a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »

Author:

Author Email (optional):

Author URL (optional):

Post:

↓ | ↑

Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>